Use: We use this form when talking about something that somebody else has done for us.

Illustrative Presentation Context

Zara lives in San Francisco. She is a very busy lawyer. One day, she found water dripping from the roof. Soon, there was water all over the floor. She called the plumber and told him to fix it. The plumber found the leak and repaired it. Now, there is no leak. (more…)

Use: A commonly used polite way of making a request, mostly used in formal language. Though it is used in a question form, the phrase is just another way of requesting someone.

Illustrative Presentation Context

Sunil was a student at St. Giles. One day, his phone rang when he was in class. He answered his phone. It was his mother calling from India. She could not hear him clearly. He had to talk louder. The other students were looking at him. They could not work because he was talking so loudly. The teacher asked him to go outside the classroom to talk. (more…)

2. “get over” as in to “get over a wall” and “get over a relationship/illness” (cover both meanings)

Basic Meaning/Use

Meaning:
To cross something in the way
To feel better after something bad has happened

Use:
“Get over” is used to describe the action of crossing something high that is blocking the way. Usually, one needs to work hard to cross it.
“Get over” is also used when someone feels better after something bad happens.

Illustrative Presentation Context

When I was a kid, my neighbor had many fruit trees in his garden. He had a big wall all around his garden. My brother and I loved stealing apples from his garden. Once, the neighbor found us stealing his apples. He shouted and came running. He had a stick in his hand. He was going to beat us. My brother and I ran to the wall, climbed it and ran away. (more…)

Only been six years since I did the CELTA in June 2009, feels like a lifetime and some. I first posted my assignments on my blog (now defunct) after I finished the CELTA, and didn’t realize they would attract so much attention. Hundreds of CELTA trainees have, over the years, used these assignments as a guide to do their own. Several connected with me via comments and there was even a strange coincidence where I met someone on another ESL training course, who had actually used my assignments while doing his CELTA in Paris! So since my blog is now dead, I thought I would at least re-post the assignments here for anyone who may still find them useful.

….

Now I know every CELTA center sets its own assignments for its CELTA trainees but I don’t think they are vastly different from center-to-center. For one, Fernanda, the Brazilian woman who was at St. Giles International in San Fran with us showed us a bunch of assignments that her friend did at the Sao Paolo center, and they weren’t so different.

Of course, if you’re a current CELTA trainee, you could just take these assignments, make a few minor tweaks and present them as your own. But the assignments are usually so easy (and interesting) that it’s fun to apply your brains and get them right!

Of the four assignments we had to do, only the first was seriously boring. The CELTA trainers are really anal about the guidelines set by Cambridge. It’s best to talk with your co-CELTA trainees and ensure you have understood the guidelines in the same way you have.

This assignment was really helpful in giving us an idea of how to do language analysis in our lesson plans too (and all CELTA trainees must do the language analysis for every grammar and vocabulary lesson they teach, which is more than half the lessons you would be teaching during the course)

For this assignment, we were given phrases for language analysis. Everyone in my group had to resubmit this assignment because none of us really understood then how anal our CELTA trainers – Maureen and Gabi – were going to be.

The four phrases we had to analyze were

Used to

Get over

Would you mind

To ‘get’/’have’ something done

We had to analyze the language items by presenting its basic meaning and use, an illustrative context, a marker sentence, pronunciation features, concept checking questions (CCQs) and the grammar form/pattern.

Anyway, check it out. If nothing else, it will give you a great template to analyze language items for your lesson plans. Since the assignment is very long and postach.io doesn’t allow me to attach documents ( 😦 ), I’ve divided it into five mini-posts which will follow.